In the printing market (especially in the color market) print quality matching is very important. Some printers use devices in the paper path to measure the color consistency of the printed image against target values for the color. Such devices, however, may not provide a solution if the customer just wants to match a pre-existing print, or if the print shop wants to match another printer that is running in their shop.
When multi-color printing devices are designed and manufactured, pre-established (preset) target colors are defined for each printing device to allow the printing devices to be initially calibrated (and potentially recalibrated during use in the field by field service personnel or automatically). The operating parameters of the printing device are adjusted until the printed output matches such preset target colors. Such calibration using preset target colors ensures that all printing devices manufactured according to a specific design will perform similarly. In other words, during manufacturing, printing devices can be tuned to match preset target colors to ensure that all similarly designed devices perform up to design expectations.
Further, some advance printing devices include the ability to automatically scan the printed output and periodically adjust their various operating parameters so that the printed output matches the preset target colors. This allows such printing devices to consistently maintain the quality standards they had when they were new.
The embodiments herein allow the customer or service representative to run a pre-printed target sheet through the system. As the target sheet goes through the system, the printer reads the color of the target sheet. The colors from the target sheet will be stored as custom target colors for the printer. Once the custom target colors are set, any subsequent printed sheets can be calibrated to the custom target colors from the target sheet.
The embodiments herein do more than just match the output colors to preset target colors for the printer itself and, instead, the embodiments herein dynamically reset the target colors maintained by the printing device to the color of an item scanned by a user. Therefore, the dynamic custom target colors used by embodiments herein are different than the static preset target colors initially established during the design of the printing apparatus. Instead, the embodiments herein cause the printing apparatus to conform to the scanned item and to ignore its preset target colors. Therefore, embodiments herein allow one printer to visually match the output of a different class, type, or brand of printer.
More specifically, method embodiments herein scan an item having at least one color feature (e.g., a color image on a sheet of media, a physical item having a specific color, or any other item physically capable of being scanned) using an in-line spectrophotometer of the printing apparatus. The scanning identifies at least one “item color” within the color feature. The embodiments herein store the item color as at least one custom target color in a computer-readable storage medium of the printing apparatus. The custom target color can be stored with the print job for future reference.
At least one print job is processed through a printing engine of the printing apparatus to output at least one printed sheet. During the processing of the print job, the printed sheet is scanned with the in-line spectrophotometer to identify at least one printed color on the printed sheet and the printed color is compared to the custom target color to identify a color difference. Thus, during the processing of the print job, the embodiments herein can adjust printing characteristics of the printing apparatus to reduce the color difference and thereby output a print job that precisely satisfies the customer's color requirements.
Device/system embodiments herein utilize a processor within a printing apparatus. An in-line spectrophotometer that comprises an integral part of the printing apparatus is operatively connected to the processor. The in-line spectrophotometer scans the item that has the color feature to identify the item color. A computer-readable storage medium, that is operatively connected to the processor, stores the item color as the custom target color. The computer-readable storage medium can also store the custom target color with the print job for future reference and can send the print job and custom target color(s) to other similar printers to allow the job to be processed across multiple printers.
The printing apparatus includes a printing engine (again, operatively connected to the processor). The printing engine processes at least one print job to output at least one printed sheet. The sheet path of the printing apparatus is also operatively connected to the processor. The sheet path directs the printed sheet to the in-line spectrophotometer to identify at least one printed color on the printed sheet. The processor compares the printed color(s) to the custom target color(s) to identify a color difference, and the processor adjusts printing characteristics of the printing apparatus to reduce such color difference. Once the printing apparatus properly matches the custom target colors for a given print job, the print job is output to a sheet output (operatively connected to the end of the sheet path).
These and other features are described in, or are apparent from, the following detailed description.